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Thursday, 29 November 2007

The Yellow Rain by Julio Llamazares

This is a good book to read at the end of autumn just as winter sets in, because that's the season of the book. It's beautifully written, full of late autumnal and winter weather. The narrator is the last person in his village in the Spanish Pyrenees, everyone else has either died or moved away. Even those who have moved away to neighbouring villages rarely come to visit him. He watches nature take over his home village, ivy and lichens growing on the buildings, snow and wind damaging the roofs. It's a melancholy farewell to a way of life. The Yellow Rain by Julio Llamazares, translated from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa. Published in Spanish in 1988, translated into English 2004.